3 Things The Knicks Should Look At In The Off-Season

As is New York tradition, after showing glimmers of hope at the
beginning of the 2015-16 season, the Knicks have once again bumbled to a
losing record. Was it really only a few months ago that the narrative
in New York looked like it would have a happy ending? The 21-year old
Latvian rookie defying all expectations of young, European players by
balling out from day one? The surprisingly-good (Derrick Williams in
particular) play of the bench crew? Dad Melo?

What in the Five Boroughs happened to cause the 2016 Knicks to swirl
the drain so quickly when they had initially shown so much promise?

As it turns out, a couple of things. Porzingis hits the rookie wall,
hard. Melo's lingering knee problems resurface. Coach Fisher's bizarre
turn as Mr. Steal Yo' Gurl. A regime change occurs as Knicks President
Phil Jackson gives Fisher the boot only to give the head coaching job to
his good friend, the bafflingly incompetent Kurt Rambis. The team
slides out of playoff contention (and by playoff contention I mean maybe
we could've grabbed the 8th seed) and back into irrelevancy; ho hum,
same ol' Knicks, pass the salt.

In saying that, this season had some bright spots and did give the NY
faithful some things to look forward to in the future. So put away
those cyanide pills, Knicks fans, cos today we'll be examining these
bright spots in the context of the pending off-season, and what the NYK
front office can do to keep improving the team.

1. Fire Rambis

This should really go without saying. When he was made interim coach
following Fisher's firing, I was naive enough to think that he would be
exactly that: an interim coach to have on the floor during games while
the front office hammered out the fine print of Tom Thibodeau's 3-year
contract. Nope, just like Sasha Vujacic getting serious playing time,
this was classic Jackson nepotism. To some degree I can understand his
thinking; Jackson wants to have the Knicks run a triangle offence, so he
brings in guys who played for him to implement it. Thing is, this kind
of tunnel vision can obviously hurt the team in the long run. As the
game continues to change, how relevant will the triangle be to a
functioning, high-level offence?

Not only that, but Rambis can't coach. I'm not saying that to be
insulting or derogatory, either. I'm saying Kurt Rambis knows coaching
the way I know about piloting 1920's-era German zeppelins. He doesn't
seem to grasp rotations or switches, he plays Melo 40 mins in losing
games, he benches Porzingis for 20 mins at a time, the game has passed
him by.

With that being said, the controversy about his Twitter 'likes' was and
is all bullshit, no man should ever be shamed for appreciating great
asses on a daily basis.

2. Get more shooters

This season, New York was one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in
the league. As the game embraces the three-point shot as an offensive focal point, it logically follows that the Knicks should too. Now, i'm not saying that New York should straight up copy the Golden State blueprint, but it would be at best arrogant to eschew this method in favour of the old-school method of big-men scoring 2 points at a time. Furthermore, we already have a PF
who can defend AND hit 3's at a decent clip; the kind of player who, in
the post-Draymond NBA landscape, are worth their weight in gold in
today's market. Wouldn't it make a bit more sense to at least crib SOME
of the concepts that made Golden State such an offensive juggernaut?

Looking at our starting five, it's easily the guards that are the
weaker players in this system. Jose Calderon can hit 3's and so can
Aaron Afflalo, but their weaknesses and inefficiencies are glaring at
this point. Calderon plays defence like a pair of swinging saloon doors,
and Afflalo's propensity for mid-range post-ups kill all ball movement.
In my uninformed opinion, Knicks FO should target a JJ Redick-type
off-ball shooter or a 3-and-D Pat Beverly-type in the off-season to get
their 3-point shooting back to league average.

3. Porzingis needs a bigger role

This is a hard one to convey, because how can Porzingis take on a
bigger role while the season is over? What I mean by this is that KP
should prepare to become a bigger part of the Knicks offence and
defence, spend more time on the floor in general and do everything he
can to be prepared for the 2016-17 season. I think even the most
optimistic Knicks fan (like there's any of those left) was expecting
this year to be a down one. We had no idea what to expect from Porzingis
yet, nobody knew how Afflalo, Galloway, Grant etc. would perform
together.

Fortunately our pick from Latvia, who so many were already predicting
as a bust, performed well above expectations. For a while, the Rookie
of the Year was looking like a race between Porzingis, Anthony-Towns and
Okafor. Unfortunately, reality set in. KP as a teenager had barely
played a dozen games in the Spanish league before coming to the States
for a full 82-game NBA season. In short, he hit the rookie wall. But
next year he won't be a rookie, teams would've had a full year of
gathering footage to learn how to play against him. At the risk of
sounding like a horrible cliche, this is the kind of situation that
separates the special players from the merely good ones. Kawhi Leonard
is an example of a present-day superstar who started as role-player and
has improved every year to reach his current level of play; there's
nothing wrong with not being perfect immediately. Put on muscle, work on
your shooting, whatever it is. Porzingis has demonstrated at this point
that he is the future for the Knicks, but it's up to him to reach that
level.